Betrayed: She Took My Son novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Church

The coffin was white and no longer than my arm.

It sat on a stand at the front of the church in Dublin, and it held Lacey's stillborn baby.

Yellow roses lay across the lid. Dot had cut them from her own bushes at five that morning.

The priest said a name aloud, and it was the first time anyone had said it over this child.

"Beckett Avery Reeve."

Lacey had picked that name for the baby in the box, and then used it on mine.

I had taken it back and given it to the one it was meant for.

I held Liam in the front pew with one hand and gripped the wood with the other.

The whole street had come.

The minivan woman sat in the third row with her husband.

The man with the lawn mower stood at the back in a tie.

The women from the dental office filled half a pew.

Philip sat alone on the far aisle in a dark suit, with his shoulders bent.

Clayton sat beside me.

When the priest spoke the name, he put his hand over mine on the pew.

He left it there in front of everyone.

I did not move it.

The service was short, because the baby had been too.

Afterward the doors at the back opened, and a woman in black came down the aisle on a cane.

She wore pearls and a hat with a small veil. She was seventy, upright, and she walked straight past the family pews toward me.

Philip stood.

"Mother," he said.

I had met her three times. She had called me "dear" every time, with her eyes on the bridge of my nose.

"I flew in this morning," she said. "I'm sorry for your loss, Melanie."

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